Year of the Demon

by Steve Bein

  Daigoro shook his head and began to bind his sune-ate to his shins.

  “What are you doing?” said Katsushima.

  “Standing by my word. I told you already: as long as Shichio lives, I am at war. I may as well dress for the occasion.”

  Katsushima smirked. “Fair enough. But armoring yourself now is overmuch, is it not? Tonight we go only to our beds. Do you intend to sleep in your armor?”

  “I would if I could.”

  “Daigoro—”

  “We’re targets, Katsushima. For us the whole countryside is a battlefield.”

  “All right, all right. But we’re only going down the road—”

  “My father was killed only riding along the road. And he had no enemy so powerful as Shichio. Going unarmored is a luxury I can no longer afford.”

  Daigoro slipped his right arm into its kote and tied it fast, examining it as he did so. The ruddy damask padding that lined the inside had been replaced with white, but where the original had silken bears pacing across its surface, the replacement was a simple, unadorned basket weave. That made sense, he supposed; Kyoto’s weavers might take days just to learn the bear pattern, a pattern that Okuma weavers knew from memory. Even so, Daigoro regretted the change. Even in the waning light he could feel the difference, and the problem was not that this coarse fabric was suited for common stock; rather, it was the thought of his family’s bear crest heaped in the rubbish bin of some Nishijin weaving-house.

  He donned the second kote, lamenting the fact that even his Sora armor couldn’t protect him as much as he’d like. Wearing his full oyoroi wouldn’t do—it would only serve to call attention to himself—but he had resolved to wear every piece he could reasonably hide under his clothing. That ruled out all the large pieces save the Sora breastplate. It felt strange to be armored only partially, but then everything about his new situation felt strange. He was Daigoro but not Okuma Daigoro. He was married and yet he might never see his wife again. Some not-so-distant day he would become a father, but in all likelihood he would never know when it happened.

  Daigoro slipped between the clamshell pieces of his Sora yoroi and pulled the straps until the heavy steel pressed firmly on his chest and his back. Last came his new haori, the overrobe he’d purchased the day before, right after he and Katsushima had left their yoroi with the armorer. With its wide, white, pointed shoulders, the haori made Daigoro feel as if he had wings, and between the haori and the added girth of his armor, he thought perhaps he no longer looked like a little boy. For the first time in his life he actually looked like a samurai. And it would not last long. He’d scarcely gotten used to shaving the top of his head, and now he would have to stop. It was the samurai’s birthright to maintain the caste’s traditional topknot and shaven pate, but Daigoro had given up his birthright when he’d renounced his name. For a few months Okuma Daigoro had been samurai, a man of age, the lord of his house. Now he did not know what he was.

  “What do you think?” he said. “How do I look?”

  Katsushima inspected him. “You look like a lordly man who will sleep alone tonight.”

  “Be serious.”

  Katsushima laughed and said, “By the buddhas, the world is not only shadow; there is sunlight too.” Seeing Daigoro’s reaction, he forced a straight face. “Very well. In all seriousness, you do not appear to be armored, and in all seriousness I think you will go to bed tonight without a woman to play your flute.”

  Daigoro slung Glorious Victory over his back, thrust his wakizashi back through his belt, and led Katsushima back to their shelter for the evening.

  Three nights earlier, when they’d left the Jurakudai, Daigoro had found himself at a loss. He’d never had to hide from anyone before. In fact, in his whole life thus far he’d always been able to get what he wanted simply by announcing his name. To go abroad without announcing himself was awkward, and to actively deceive people about his identity came as naturally to him as riding horseback came to a fish. He remembered all too well saying, “Goemon, I have no idea what to do or where to go.”

  And he remembered all too well the wry smile Katushima had given him in return. “At last,” Katsushima had said, “we come to my territory.”

  Hence the brothel.

  It embarrassed Daigoro even to cross the threshold. Jasmine perfume and opium smoke had worked their way into the very woodwork, so that Daigoro was overcome by the smell of the place. Girlish giggling was constantly in the background, punctuated now and then by the whistle of a shakuhachi, the humming harmony of a shamisen, or the staccato rhythm of some unseen man grunting like a pig.

  Daigoro did not think of himself as a prude. Back when he was at home he’d been well aware that he could have visited any pleasure house in Izu on any night he wished, and the only difference in being married was that as manager of the household finances, Akiko would have been the one who paid the bill. She would have understood as any wife would have understood—and she’d be all the more understanding, Daigoro reminded himself, if he availed himself of the women here, so many ri from home. But the smells and sounds of this house reminded him all too vividly of the pleasure house Ichiro had taken him to visit when they were boys. His cheeks burned as he remembered the embarrassment, the woman’s cold hand slipping down into his hakama, her fingertips finding the wasted tissues of his thigh on their way to what they sought. Her face had been so close to his that he could feel her breath, smell it, taste it. Had she been any farther away, he might not have noticed her wince when her fingers touched his thigh. It was a vanishingly small expression, and she’d recovered instantly, but still he’d noticed. That same embarrassment was reborn in his face even now.

  The girls that eyed him now misinterpreted it as boyish hesitation. He was small, and had a young-looking face even for a sixteen-year-old. Two of the girls tittered at him and pranced up on tiptoes. They were wispy and delicate, and when they whispered in his ears their breath made the skin on his forearms tingle. The things they said would have made their own madam blush. He knew his ears and cheeks turned red, because the girls exploded in a fit of giggles and went flitting off like a couple of butterflies.

  “Ladies, be polite,” the madam told them. She was stately, statuesque, with a husky voice and sly, knowing eyes. She wore a green brocade kimono with silver threads that matched the silver streak in the middle of her long, flowing hair.

  “Gentlemen,” she said, her voice low and smoky, “so pleased to see you again. I’ve got something special in store for you if you’ll follow me.”

  “No, thank you,” said Daigoro. “I’ll just need a bath and a bed.”

  The madam arched a black eyebrow at him. “You’ll forgive me, my young lord, if I suggest a woman of my maturity knows what you need more than you do. Trust me: come this way and you won’t regret it.”

  Daigoro felt his cheeks flush. She held his gaze much longer than she should have, and Daigoro thought it might have been a silent offer to service him herself. Her eyes flashed at him, and he realized what he saw in them was not desire at all. It was fear.

  “All right,” he said, and the madam’s eyes flashed again. What was she afraid of? It certainly wasn’t Daigoro. She stood head and shoulders taller than him, but apart from that, she had the air of one who had survived everything a man could imagine. She needed only a glance to know Daigoro had no intention to kill her, and none of his other intentions could threaten her in the least.

  He followed her upstairs, where the lanterns burned low and the scent of incense was stronger than ever. Katsushima followed, along with the two butterflies that had whispered in Daigoro’s ear when he’d first come in. “Your man should wait in there,” the madam said, and her graceful hand gestured snakelike at a door. Instantly one of the butterflies knelt beside it and opened it. The other flitted to Katsushima, tucked a finger under his belt, and beckoned him inside.

  Katsushima’s hungry eyes appraised her; then he looked back to Daigoro. “I, uh—”

  “You
won’t be needing him where you’re going,” the madam told Daigoro. The second of the butterflies took Katsushima by the arm, and the two of them tugged him into the room and closed the shoji.

  Daigoro studied the madam. She looked back at him coolly, as if she’d contained her earlier fear. Daigoro didn’t know what to expect when she led him to the next door. His best guess was an assassin. Why else would she have been afraid? And why else should she feel relief to have separated Daigoro from his bodyguard?

  Whatever her reasons, Daigoro was glad to be wearing his armor. “I’m warning you,” he said, but before he could finish his sentence she slid the door open.

  Inside lay General Mio—or what was left of him, at any rate. Huge sores had opened all over his body, every last one festering with maggots. His mouth was swollen and purple, livid with infection. Loops of purple and black bruises coursed around every part of his body, almost as if he’d been tattooed to look like he was wrapped in cords. Despite the efforts of the three girls tending to him, he stank like a corpse. But they were whores, not healers, and the putrid stench of him was enough to make their eyes water. One of them laid a folded wet cloth across his sweating forehead, holding another over her own nose and mouth.

  “Get inside,” the madam whispered. “I beg you, quickly.”

  Daigoro stepped into the room and the madam hurriedly shut the door behind them. Mio’s head lolled in the direction of the noise, and the folded cloth slipped off. “He was feverish when he barged in this morning,” the madam said, keeping her voice low. “Several times he started shaking, and I was sure he would die. But he just kept moaning your name.”

  “I never told you my name.”

  “There are only so many boys here, and of them, only one I thought to be a lord.” She unrolled a small scroll and showed it to Daigoro; on it someone had used brown ink and a clumsy hand to scrawl the characters for boy and lord.

  Her relief was as obvious as a mask on her face. Now Daigoro understood: Mio terrified her. And why wouldn’t he? The man was a giant, and his wounds should have killed a horse. Judging by the stench, they’d been rotting for days, and yet Mio still mustered the strength to force his way in.

  “How did he find me here?”

  “How did he even take the first step on that path?” said the madam. “Some demon drives him—or else some higher purpose. Either way, ‘relentless’ does not begin to describe him. He should have been dead days ago.”

  “He wanted to see me alone, did he?”

  “That’s what he said. Or wrote, rather.”

  That explained the rest. Mio doubted Katsushima’s loyalty—a reasonable reaction from one who had just been betrayed by one of his own allies. These wounds could only be Shichio’s work.

  Daigoro knelt next to Mio, who groaned something unintelligible. His jaws were locked tight and he sounded drunk—sounded like his tongue was missing, in fact, or like his fever had caused him to forget how to speak.

  Mio gestured feebly at the madam and Daigoro saw someone had mutilated the general’s hand. Two oblong wounds gaped like mouths, extending from the knuckles all the way down to the wrist. Similar wounds stood out on his legs, his belly, his chest, as if a wild animal had taken bites out of him.

  Daigoro noticed the madam drew a tiny breath through her mouth, as if she needed to brace herself against the stench of decay before approaching. She unrolled the scroll along the tatami next to Mio’s hand, then quickly retreated. For his part, Mio pushed his fingertip into his swollen mouth, and it came away bloody to serve as his writing brush.

  The least talented schoolchild had better penmanship. Then again, the least of Mio’s wounds would have killed the child outright. Mio’s finger was slow and sloppy, and it was a triumph of will every time he mustered the strength to raise his finger back to his mouth. As he traced one bright red character after another, Daigoro inspected the rest of the scroll. The first characters he’d traced were boy Daigoro, followed by doctor, lord Daigoro, here, water, fetch boy, and boy danger. Things became less clear after that. A waggling smudge here and there hinted at the moments Mio lost consciousness. The characters followed no uniform lines and no cohesive train of thought. It was clear Mio’s fever was baking his brain.

  Wed, Mio wrote. Mother.

  “He’s fading away again,” said one of the nursing girls, peering over Daigoro’s shoulder. “His spells last longer and longer each time.”

  Mio slapped the paper—a childish and feeble gesture for one so strong. His bloody fingertip stabbed at the scroll, poking tiny crescent-shaped holes and leaving red prints.

  “General, I don’t understand,” Daigoro said. “Please, help me.”

  Again Mio wetted his finger and traced it on the paper. The first character was nana, seven. The second was illegible.

  Wed. Mother. Seven. It made no sense. Daigoro tried again to read the character after seven, but it was just a mess of red. “Seven what?” he said. It could have been anything.

  Mio desperately slapped the paper again, his face a red, bunched, pain-stricken grimace. Daigoro looked hopelessly at the scroll once more. There were no more clues now than there had been a moment before, and Mio was fading quickly.

  And then it clicked. Nana, the character for seven, could also be read shichi. “Shichio?” he said. “You mean Shichio?”

  Mio grunted. It sounded affirmative, but Daigoro could only guess.

  Wed. Mother. Shichio. He tried to think of other readings for the characters wed and mother. No insights there. Mio tried to lift his finger to his mouth and failed. Daigoro took his arm gingerly by the wrist and helped him. Together they succeeded in bloodying the finger, but Mio could manage to write no more. Somehow he still clung to consciousness, but his body had failed him. Daigoro knew he would not regain control of himself again; the giant man was dying, and dying quickly.

  Desperately, Daigoro scanned the other characters on the page. Water and medicine were of no help. Where was probably an inquiry about Daigoro. Boy and lord were obvious. Dai became shorthand for those two somewhere along the way.

  On one line he found mother again, this time paired with dai. Daigoro’s mother. He paired that in his mind with wed and Shichio and came up with the unthinkable.

  “Shichio intends to marry my mother?”

  Mio moaned through lips so swollen he could no longer part them.

  “General Mio, please. One more word. Please. Does he plan to marry my mother?”

  A last groan from General Mio. Then the breath leaked out of him.

  A burst of noise and splinters exploded behind Daigoro. He turned to see Katsushima, naked, kicking his way through the shoji with sword in hand. The steel held an orange glow in the dim light of the lanterns. “Daigoro!” he said. “Are you—?”

  He choked on his words when he saw Mio’s body. “What is this?”

  The madam rounded on him, and if she had them she would have bared claws. The smell of incense flooded the room—which, Daigoro thought, could only mean that the reek of the enormous corpse was flooding out of the room. The madam looked angry enough to burst into flame.

  Before she could say anything, Daigoro spoke. “Make yourself decent, Katsushima. We need to lay plans.”

  40

  By the time Daigoro had a minute’s respite to think, he was utterly exhausted. Their only reason for staying at the brothel was that it was supposed to be the sort of place a man could go discreetly. They needed to lie low; smashing through walls and stinking up the place was hardly the way to do that. Every man in the house must have heard the racket; rumors would spread, and Daigoro’s height and limp were distinctive. Word would reach Shichio in no time. Yet he and Katsushima could hardly flee; they needed to help the madam set her rooms back in order, or else it was all but guaranteed that she would betray them to Shichio herself.

  So they had a corpulent, putrefying corpse to get rid of, and since it was Mio’s, Daigoro felt obligated to see him laid to rest properly. They could not giv
e the general the stately funeral he deserved, but neither could they simply roll him off a bridge into the Kamo. Then there were repairs to see to, and silence to be paid for, and all the rest. It was sunrise before Daigoro had a moment’s peace.

  “We must be away,” Katsushima said, though he too looked as exhausted as Daigoro felt. His unkempt hair seemed grayer than ever. Neither of them was in any condition to ride. Even so, Daigoro managed to sling himself into his saddle, Glorious Victory clattering on his back. Her weight threatened to pull him to the ground. Even at this hour the Kyoto streets were growing crowded, and Daigoro worried about how many eyes lingered on his chestnut mare and Katsushima’s blood bay gelding.

  They rode back to the Sanjo Ohashi under Daigoro’s lead. More than once he drifted off in the saddle, and every time the feeling of falling jarred him awake. He never fell off his horse, but each time he gripped his saddle horn tighter and did not easily let go.

  It was late into the hour of the dragon by the time the road had cleared enough that they could speak without being overheard. It was hot and Daigoro was sweating in his armor. Exhausted as he was, he knew he had to explain everything Mio had told him.

  “It’s damned clever,” Katsushima said when Daigoro had finished. “Assuming it’s true.”

  “I cannot make sense of it,” said Daigoro. His eyes felt sandy and he found it difficult to link two thoughts together. “Why should he suddenly want to marry my mother?”

  “To weaken you. Think about it. Any Okuma samurai who remained loyal to you would be guilty of treason. Shichio would be the rightful head of the clan.”

  “No. Shichio? The next Lord Okuma? He’d be taking on his wife’s name, Goemon. No man could bear the shame.”

  “No samurai could bear the shame. But what of a farmer’s son?”

  Daigoro hadn’t thought of it that way. Shichio had no name of his own. He had no estate, no station, and no respect at court. Hideyoshi had once been in the same stead, until the emperor himself raised him up. Shichio would never receive such favors. There could only be one regent.